M. Iqbal Saif’s research while affiliated with Foundation University Islamabad and other places

The study identifies and evaluates the association among corporate solvency management strategies and the corporate performance valuation in Chemical industry of Pakistan. The study uses purposive sampling or judgmental sampling for selecting 30 sample companies from the sector; covering 10 years financial statements data ranging from year 2002 to 2011. Balanced panel data is taken for the purpose of study. Levin, Lin & Chu test is used to check the stationarity of data whereas White Test is used to check the heteroskedasticity of data. Panel Least square technique with fixed effects is used to generalize the relationship between studied variables. The study observed that the performance of the chemical sector in terms of market to book value is affected by internal firm and industry specific factors related to solvency management strategic decisions. Findings of the study provide with the overview of historic performance and the potential performance of the selected sector to help policy makers including finance, economics and industry experts for creating value through the idiosyncratic resources.

The paper investigates the presence of a sense of emotional intelligence (EI) in human beings and the potential it can offer in organizational settings. The results are based upon a critical review of the available literature. The study indicates the presence of a sense of EI in human beings. It reveals a positive role of EI in our professional lives. It shows that employees’ EI contributes positively to enhance their job performance while they are working on assignments individually, jointly in teams and/ or in leadership roles.

Earnings management has emerged as an imperative issue in the recent past for the investors, analysts and the capital markets since it serves as a barometer to identify, analyze, evaluate and predict the future potential of the companies to generate cash flows for the stakeholders of the corporations, which ultimately helps in determining the attractiveness of the stock of that corporation for the current and prospective investors. This study is an attempt to examine the impact of earnings management on the profitability of the non financial listed companies of Pakistan. The study was conducted on the companies listed at Karachi Stock Exchange. The sample included 98 companies comprising different sectors and taking five year financial data from annual reports of those selected companies from year 2002 to year 2006. Modified Jones model was applied to calculate the discretionary accruals which were violently used to manage earnings and used as a proxy of earnings management in the literature. Cross sectional time series regression was used for empirical verification of the findings of the study. Results showed that the Earnings Management has negative impact on the profitability of the companies. This study will be of significant importance for managers, investors and analyst for decision making and analysis purposes, by facilitating in understanding how company's profits are manipulated.

The main objective of this research was to understand the role of shared vision on the partnership success, partner's satisfaction and organizational profitability. The data was collected through 2200 partners of 1100 partnership businesses. Regression analysis, structural equation modeling, barron and Kenny methods and Sobel test was used to analyze the data. Analysis revealed that shared vision has a strong positive influence on the partnership success, satisfaction and profitability. Results also indicated the partial mediation of satisfaction on the relationship of shared vision and profitability.

The study attempts to explain the relationship between human capital management and organizational performance. Hypotheses were developed to test the impact of HCM on the performance of organizations. Data was collected from 16 firms (knowledge intensive industry segment) located in Peshawar (Pakistan) in where source of competitive advantage is human capital namely higher education institutions and pharmaceutical firms. Employing sample size of 316 employees and 16 executives on HCM score card and organizational performance constructs data were collected. The reliability of the constructs is validated by Cronbach's Alpha value. Pearson correlation and linear regression were used to test hypotheses. Results of the study show that firm's HCM has a significant positive impact on organizational performance. Study results provide support to strategy of investment in human capital and its management for competitive advantage at organizational and national level.

Present study examined the role played by microfinance in poverty alleviation using concepts like education of children, housing, security of food, expenditure by households and assets owned by households. A sample of 384 customers of four microfinance institutions was selected using multi-stage cluster sampling. The results reveal a positive and significant effect of microfinance programs on children education and household expenditure, whereas, there was no significant impact of microfinance on housing conditions, consumption of food items and ownership of household assets.

This study explores the relationships between business education in Pakistani universities and the development of the entrepreneurial capabilities in students. It also focuses upon the potential differentials on entrepreneurial making among public and private universities. This is a cross-sectional casual study using questionnaire for a sample of 320 students of 04 different universities at Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Discriminate and regression analyses have been used to analyze the data. Results show relationship, though not very strong, between business education and entrepreneurial capabilities. Moreover, results also reveal that both private and public business schools are responsible for almost equal level of entrepreneurial capabilities.

Emotional intelligence and service quality--this study was designed to examine the relationship between the said two variables. While using teacher made tools from the body of knowledge, data was collected through a self administered questionnaire from the officers of two leading banks in Pakistan; one was foreign bank that paid more attention to the improvement of service quality and the other one was well reputed, fastest growing local bank, did not spend much on quality issues as was the practice in foreign bank. SPSS version 12 was used for data analysis. The empirical analysis revealed that emotional intelligence is a strong predictor of service quality in case of foreign banking in Pakistan.

Keeping in view the significance of TQM in todays competitive banking environment, the study was designed to look into the quality implementation level of commercial banks in Pakistan. Main offices of all commercial banks operating in Pakistan were contacted and were asked about the level of implementation of TQM in their bank; whether the quality implementation is at its introductory, middle, final or fully implemented stage. The data indicated that majority of the banks in Pakistan are at the introductory stage where as almost one fifth claim having TQM fully implemented. The situation highlights the level of effort put by management of banks operating in Pakistan and initiatives taken by them in respect of quality management. The findings of the study may be passed on to Central Bank for further necessary action and follow up.

This comparative research was designed to investigate the impact of service quality on customer satisfaction in the Pakistani banking sector. Hypothesis developed for the study was higher level of service quality leads to higher level of customer satisfaction. A sample of two hundred respondents, (one hundred from a foreign bank and one hundred from a public sector / nationalized bank located in the twin cities of Rawalpindi and Islamabad) was drawn on the basis of simple random sampling. Various constructs of SERVQUAL model developed by Zeithaml and Bitner (1996) and five point customer satisfaction tool developed by Taylor and Baker (1994) were adopted and used for data collection. Data were analyzed through SPSS version 14. Results of the regression analysis indicated that service quality was proved to be a strong predictor of customer satisfaction in case of the foreign bank with the R2 value of 0.644 accepting research hypothesis and rejecting null hypothesis as compared value R2 of 0.156 that does not support the research hypothesis in case of public sector bank. The study concluded that service quality, if managed effectively, can contribute significantly towards customer satisfaction.